Sumomo no hana
by Yui Miyamoto
Summary: What did Shimbo intend when he made Sumomo? Could she go beyond herself and realize what he was trying to teach her to be? Something that couldn't be programmed...


Disclaimer: Chobits belongs to Clamp.  
  
Sumomo no hana. (Plum blossoms.)  
  
by miyamoto yui  
  
Once upon a time, there was a young man who went to a specialty shop for persocoms. Even though there were many tall and beautiful ones, he carried out a small box when he left the shop. He didn't know why, but he wanted a small, cute one. It was for practical reasons, but maybe it was more convenient to have it this way.  
  
When he got back to his apartment, he couldn't wait to put it together. Even though he was familiar with computers and that sort of thing, there was something special about that particular box. He sat in the middle of his room and folded his arms together. He stared at it.  
  
"I mustn't be too hasty," he mumbled to himself. "I want to do this right."  
  
As excited as he was, he didn't put the persocom together right away. He got up and made dinner, but he was so distracted.   
  
"What do I want?" he wondered aloud. "What do I want her to do? How do I want her to be?"  
  
After eating his dinner, he came up with an idea. It suddenly came to him. With a cheerful voice, he said, "I want someone cheerful!"  
  
And with that, he slowly opened the box. Diligently, he worked on her all night until she was absolutely perfect.   
  
He didn't know why, but he put her in different shades of pink. He even put red spots on her cheeks to make her even cuter.   
  
The small persocom was finished! She was sitting on his hand with her head down.   
  
And the more and more he looked at her, the prouder he became. "I've done a good job."  
  
Her eyes were still closed and he twiddled with the ends of her hair trying to figure out what kind of personality he wanted her to have. "She looks cheerful, but how do I make her act that way?"  
  
The young man was stuck. Even though he was a calm person who was always smiling, he thought about many things. And one of them was the woman that he was in love with.  
  
Should he have made her like that, he wondered. But then, he immediately shook his head at the mere thought. She, after all, wouldn't have appreciated to have a persocom adapt her characteristics if she was hurt by one once. And that was indirectly from the persocom.  
  
He wanted her to be her own persocom. Someone, despite her short stature, was still genki and ready to stand up for herself when the time ever arose that she needed to.  
  
That was the type of persocom he wanted her to be.  
  
"Yes, that's right." As he put his finger on her chin, he smiled at her even though she didn't know he was. He stared at her and laughed to himself. She reminded him of the little girl he liked when he was a kid.   
  
Her name was Reika. She was a tomboy that didn't care about whatever people said. He liked her because she was always wearing a smile at any type of weather. No matter what was going on, she held that smile on her face. When she got into a fight at school with a boy, she didn't cry. She was just cool like that.  
  
He shook his head. "I didn't want you modeled after her and then I want to give you the personality of another girl."  
  
After all, as with all things, you couldn't make something out of nothing. As sad as it may have seemed, all humans' thoughts were an accumulation of their experiences, feelings, and information they had been given over the years.   
  
So, how could he think any differently than what was in his nature?  
  
"But I want you to become more than that." He closed his eyes and lightly touched his forehead to his persocom's.forehead. "I have high hopes for you."  
  
Then, he laughed to himself. "I can't believe I'm getting all worked up and I haven't even woken her up yet."  
  
He began to program her with all the love and effort he could have ever possibly given to someone. It was strange, but he felt like he was giving his own blood to her. She was going to become his family and his friend. Someone who would know him more than anyone else in the world.  
  
It wasn't that he was planning all this in his head, but it was just that he felt relieved in a way.  
  
A person could only go on for so long without really talking to another person. That was just how humans were, after all. No matter how much 'alone time' you wanted, there would always be a time when you would starve to have someone to interact with. Sometimes, people got so desparate they committed suicide. But there were some, likened to the experience of the one he loved right now, who made their own tangible illusions. And persocom was its name.  
  
"I'm not like that though," he thought to himself as he was programming her.   
  
He had bought her for practical reasons such as e-mail and stuff like that, but there was something deep inside of him that thought there was something more. He immediately dismissed that thought.   
  
When he finished, after much thought, he looked at her face again. Her name just rolled off his tongue as if he had always know the name before he created her.   
  
He pressed the 'on' button and she opened her eyes, those eyes of plates that reflected whomever or whatever she was staring at. He saw his own reflection and it kind of disturbed him.  
  
"Dare...ka?" the little persocom said to him as she looked up at him.  
  
The young man looked at the persocom he held in the palm of his hand and smiled, "I'm Shimbo. And your name is Sumomo."  
  
"Shimbo confirmed. Sumomo confirmed."   
  
As soon as she said that, her face lit up and she practically jumped in his palm. She grabbed his thumb and said, "Hi!"  
  
Shimbo laughed as he looked down at her and greeted back, "Um, hi."  
  
"What does Sumomo mean?"  
  
Were persocoms always this bouncy, he wondered, but he shook his head as he kept his smile. She made him feel so energetic too.   
  
"It says that it means 'plum' in Japanese." She answered her own question, but she blinked at him as if she was waiting for something more.  
  
"I named you that because plums are small, cute, and...and..." He was trying to think of another thing to say.  
  
"And?" she asked as she looked at him while patting his thumb lightly. She smiled at him even brighter than before.  
  
"Plum blossoms bloom early, before the spring. They make the winter very cheerful, I think."  
  
She recorded his words in her database.  
  
  
  
--  
  
As the time passed, the young man named Shimbo grew very attached to his persocom. As she was building more her personality, he was learning more about himself, especially when she shouted back at him. When he became unconfident about something, she'd tell him that he couldn't leave the apartment without saying to her that he was going to do and be his best. Yes, he loved her very much and Sumomo returned this mutual feeling.  
  
But, he wasn't 'in love' with her or anything of that sort. Maybe it was because he could see her as his friend, companion, and human-like, but not as a female.   
  
  
  
He would never be able to see her as a woman.  
  
  
  
Sumomo always did as she was told. She woke him with morning exercises and screamed, "ICHI! NI! SAN!"  
  
She was there whenever he needed her and she thought that their relationship was all right. It was nice to just be with Shimbo all the time because that's just what persocoms were for, weren't they? They provided service and companionship, but Shimbo made her his best friend.  
  
There was just something that bothered her when he was with his girlfriend though, but of course, she couldn't even begin to understand it. As much data as you had, when you could only feel to a certain limit, you couldn't get past that constraint. You had to break it completely someday.  
  
And this feeling began to grow. It made her kind of sad.  
  
But of course, she didn't tell Shimbo anything. After all, what _could_ she say?  
  
It began to dawn on her. When she met Chii, she trained her on how to properly go places, act towards her master, etc., since she was her sempai. But there was one day in which Shimbo left her with Chii so that she could talk to someone other than himself and make friends with other persocoms.  
  
Shimbo didn't come back before Hideki came home. Chii hugged him and greeted him as he closed the door behind him. Hideki said hi to her too and she ran over to grab his ankle.  
  
When she let go, Chii began to read a book to her. They were like that for quite some time, but when Hideki called Chii over, Sumomo watched them.  
  
There was something different between those two.  
  
It wasn't at all like Shimbo and her, even though they had been together much longer than Chii and Hideki had.  
  
Still, Sumomo kept silent.   
  
  
  
She was quiet even on the day that Shimbo gave her to Hideki. He didn't even explain anything to her why, what, or how did this have to happen. It wasn't fair at all. So, Sumomo was angry and upset at him, but she kept on smiling at everyone because that was how she was programmed to be.  
  
You couldn't beat what was inside of you...wasn't that correct?  
  
When everyone was asleep, she stared out the window, wondering when Shimbo would come home. There were times that Shimbo thought he saw his Sumomo at the window looking at him, but when he blinked or rubbed his eyes from tiredness, she was no longer there.  
  
--  
  
Even more time passed and Chii finally found her 'dake no hito'. After much trouble, everything calmed down and they all lived with Hideki: Chii, Kotoko, and her.   
  
Sumomo went back to her usual routine of waking everyone up and getting everyone pumped up for the day as well as making them stay that way. Kotoko always gave her deadpan looks, but Sumomo wondered what kind of person her previous owner was to have such a rigid personality.  
  
Then, she began to understand.  
  
All the things that were beyond her were finally making sense: being human, what was a Chobits, why did Shimbo leave her without an explanation. All this time, she thought her own 'dake no hito' had left her, but it was quite the opposite.  
  
Because he had loved her so much, he would always be with her. She knew that from all the time and effort he spent with her. He never needed to explain anything at all...  
  
Even though she wasn't human, Shimbo had always seen her that way. Even though she thought he never saw her as a woman, he had. How did she come to that conclusion? Voice recordings of course!  
  
She played back what he had said about her name: "It says that it means 'plum' in Japanese. I named you that because plums are small, cute, and...and...Plum blossoms bloom early, before the spring. They make the winter very cheerful, I think."  
  
Shimbo was always smiling, but she knew him more than anyone else what each smile meant. She could read him more than all the calculations and predictions she could have performed in her head.  
  
She now began to understand why he named her that because months later, he had added, "No one really notices the plum blossoms because they're in winter. And when spring comes, everyone's looking at the sakura. But I love plum blossoms more than sakura. Isn't that weird?"  
  
  
  
That was the first time he spoke so intimately with her. It was in a different tone. A more personal one, even though it was kind of sorrowful. He was showing her a side of himself that he was little insecure about..  
  
"Can you become more than the sakura?" Shimbo asked as he looked at her and touched his forehead to hers like the first time he held her in his hands.  
  
"That makes no sense," Sumomo answered. "What's that supposed to mean?"  
  
"Outdo yourself."  
  
"Outdo myself?" Sumomo looked at him with a skeptical look and raised her eyebrow as if he had lost his mind. So, she poked his head.  
  
He just nodded at her with an enigmatic smile. Maybe it was because he couldn't really describe it, but maybe it was because he wanted her to find out by herself.  
  
As Sumomo climbed up to her spot to look out the window, she smiled at the entrance as the moon shone down.  
  
She glanced back at Chii, who was now her model.  
  
"I'm going to beat the sakura!" she shouted quietly to herself when she turned her head to look at the moon.  
  
"You should go to bed, Sumomo," Kotoko said as Chii got up to get Sumomo from the window.   
  
"I think so too," Chii said as she kissed Sumomo on the forehead and went back to sleep next to Hideki.  
  
Sumomo looked at Chii as she played back her data in her head.   
  
"Her hands were so warm. Just like Shimbo's." Then, she smiled to herself while mumbling, "I'm going to become more than the sakura."  
  
Sumomo then went into standby mode.   
  
She was going to become the kind of person Shimbo had wanted her to be. To realize her own strengths and weaknesses as a persocom. That she had a heart.  
  
It was human. And that's all that counted in this ever-changing world.  
  
No matter what you were made out of.  
  
Owari.  
  
--  
  
Author's note: I wanted to try a little kid storybook type of thing with this. I don't really know why and I know that this may have been a strange style (it was for me) but I thought I'd experiment. Also, I thought that Sumomo would be the right character for it since she is the way she is. ^_^  
  
I figured I hadn't written for Chobits for a long time and had get myself up to par before restarting Forever Yours again. And because I like her, I wanted to write a book for Sumomo that was a little sad, but a little inspiring too.   
  
I made a little pun on her name and the story. Plum blossoms are an important part of the story, but it also signified Sumomo's growth. 


End file.
